Valor and Virility
by embracethis
Summary: It's interesting what the human mind can endure. It's funny what it will repress. And it's inevitable that the forces that drive our actions are completely out of our hands. Just ask Robert.
1. Chapter 1

The clock was flashing a horribly small number. It took a good few moments for it to register at all. 3:24. Was that AM or PM? The lack of dot next to the PM on the clock prompted him to realize that it was definitely very, very early. Robert hadn't gone to bed but an hour earlier, and now his phone was ringing almost uncontrollably. He knew exactly why. It was the same phone call he'd gotten every day, almost, for the past four years. And it was always at some ungodly hour. It was always too early, or too late, and it most definitely had the infamous duty of rousing him from some much required sleep that he never seemed to squeeze into his schedule.

Robert groaned. He knew that there was only one way to stop the phone from ringing. If he chose not to answer the phone, it would silence for a moment, but then the solace would stop and it would ring again. It would continue ringing and silencing and ringing and silencing until he finally picked it up. He decided to sacrifice the few moments of still air in order to get the phone call over as quickly as he could.

Reaching over, he lifted the phone from its cradle and tiredly rested it on his ear. It balanced there, moving slightly until he shifted his face under it. It finally sat in one place, and Robert murmured a soft, "Hello?"

He wouldn't have had to listen to the voice in order to know exactly who it was. He cringed as he heard the shrill voice in his ear, sobbing, and devastated. "Robert?" Robert rolled over to his back, clutching the phone and holding it to his ear. The voice continued, despite his greatest efforts to pretend that, if he stayed quiet enough, it would quiet completely. He was wrong. "Robert, where are you?" He sighed his reply, but it was clear that the voice on the other end didn't really hear. "Will you come home please?"

A small noise came from the concaves of his throat and finally, he cleared out the mid-evening phlegm. "I'm here, Mother," he replied sleepily. He rolled back over to his side and fumbled with the glasses on his bedside table. He pushed them slightly out of the way in order to turn the little knob on his lamp, and the light cast a dim sort of glow around the entire room. He found himself disturbed by his thoughts. All he wanted was some solace. All that he wanted was for his mother to actually do something other than lose herself to a bottle every night. He wanted her to mother him. He was tired of being the parent.

Her voice was panicked. "Come home!" she screeched. Robert slowly sat up. It was his duty. This was his job. He didn't have a choice anymore. From the day that his father walked out on them, Robert had been the one to pick up the slack. It was sickening. He had been fifteen years old then. Now, he was nineteen. He could scarcely attend classes anymore. He went in every day with bags under his eyes and frequent excuses for why his homework wasn't done. He had used all of them in the book, except for "My mother is a drunk, and I have to nurse her from the bottle every night." It was humiliating.

Robert stood, shaking a hand through his hair. It was a process every night that he prepared for ahead of time. His clothes from the previous day were still lying rather readily across the chair in the corner of his room. He moved lethargically over to the chair, balancing the phone between his shoulder and his ear. "I'm coming, Mother," he assured her softly. And he was sure that he could hear the sound of ice clinking in the glass he was certain was in her hand. She would be passed out when he got there, but he would still stroke back her hair. He would stay awake for the remainder of the night and keep an eye out for her. And she would vomit at some point, at which juncture Robert would turn her on her side to direct the projectile away from her airways and into the trashcan that remained by her bed.

Robert heard her swallow in a large gulp and an outward sound as she gasped from the burning feeling down her throat. "Come home now," she sobbed, and Robert nodded although he knew that she couldn't hear him. In a near silent whisper, he replied, "I'm on my way right now." He lay the phone down momentarily to zip up his pants and slip on his t-shirt. It was all drunken babble anyway, and Robert knew that there was no way that he could fix things. He couldn't fix them this far away.

Many times, Robert wondered why he didn't just move back into home, but that realization hit him each and every time he stepped through the door. It reeked of alcohol and pills, and with a mother that could only sob and scream, whose mobility was limited to the toilet and liquor cabinet…sometimes just the cabinet…Robert understood exactly why he couldn't wait for his life to be moved from Australia to a place that was much better than this hellhole.


	2. Chapter 2

Robert held the telephone to his ear the entire way to his car. His entire body was trembling and a feeling of nausea consumed his stomach. He had a midterm examination the following day – in Biblical analysis – and now, he would have to face it on only a few hours of sleep. He knew that once he arrived at his mother's tiny, yet trashed, home, he would feel obligated to stay awake for the remainder of the evening until he had to leave for his exam the following day. Everyone, at least, would not think anything was wrong. Everyone else would be functioning on just as little sleep. The difference came with the tiny detail that Robert didn't need to stay up all night studying. Everyone that he knew came into exams with eyes so red, they were nearly bleeding. But Robert, on the few instances when he had been able to sleep before an exam, had strolled in well-rested and prepared. He rarely studied. He didn't have to. His mind was able to retain information upon one reading, or one lecture. It had to be that way, so that Robert's sanity could remain in one steady location.

But now, his mind was running. His mother's voice remained on the other end of the phone, screeching and screaming. This was when it got really bad. This was when she got angry, and violent. This was the stage of the nights with alcohol when she began to rage. Robert sighed and felt his knees buckle as he fumbled with his keys. "I'll be there as soon as I can," he told her, a slightly annoyed twinge to his voice. He hesitated. This was not what was going to make him cope with the situation. This was something that would force him into self-exile. A sudden panicked expression crossed over his face, and his hand moved quickly to his pocket. His palm rolled over the top, but the panic quickly subsided. His rosary was still there, safe and sound. It was exactly where he had left it the previous day. Robert wasn't even sure that he would use it, but the face that it was there remained a system of a comfort.

His mother was still raging, but Robert turned off the phone and sat, rather hard, in the driver's seat of his car. For a moment, he just breathed. It was something that he frequently forgot to do in these pivotal moments of his life. A slightly deranged mother could do that to a person. Robert closed the car door and put the key in the ignition. But he couldn't bring himself to drive off. His hands were resting on the steering wheel of his car, and he hung his head to hang between the two of them. His forehead lay gently across the top of the steering wheel, and low classical music pulsed from the speakers near his head. For a brief moment, Robert wondered what would happen if he went home and she was dead. And it registered, momentarily, that his life would be made some much more simple. What was he thinking? This was his mother. And whether or not he wanted that to be in her description, it was her innate definition as far as he and his life were concerned.

His fingers jutted uncomfortably into his pocket, where he fished out the rosary. He was crying now, though he wasn't quite sure when it had started. It wasn't sobbing, it wasn't raging. It was nothing like his mother when she cried. There were merely tears, slowly cascading down his reddening cheeks. Robert stroked the rosary beads, one at a time, and twirled them in a small circle. His voice remained small, almost juvenile, and trembled through his emotions as he murmured the Act of Contrition. "Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven, and the pains of Hell, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen." Robert set the rosary down on the dashboard, dried his tears with the back of his hand, and began to drive.


End file.
